The Water-Cure. A Tale: In The Manner Of Prior.

"--portentaque Thessala rides?"     --Hor.     "--Thessalian portents do you flout?"     * *     CARDENIO'S fortunes ne'er miscarried     Until the day CARDENIO married.     What then? the Nymph no doubt was young?     She was: but yet--she had a tongue!     Most women have, you seem to say.     I grant it--in a different way.     'Twas not that organ half-divine,     With which, Dear Friend, your spouse or mine,     What time we seek our nightly pillows,     Rebukes our easy peccadilloes:     'Twas not so tuneful, so composing;     'Twas louder and less often dozing;     At Ombre, Basset, Loo, Quadrille,     You heard it resonant and shrill;     You heard it rising, rising yet     Beyond SELINDA'S parroquet;     You heard it rival and outdo     The chair-men and the link-boy too;     In short, wherever lungs perform,     Like MARLBOROUGH, it rode the storm.     So uncontrolled it came to be,     CARDENIO feared his chre amie     (Like ECHO by Cephissus shore)     Would turn to voice and nothing more.     That ('tis conceded) must be cured     Which can't by practice be endured.     CARDENIO, though he loved the maid,     Grew daily more and more afraid;     And since advice could not prevail     (Reproof but seemed to fan the gale),     A prudent man, he cast about     To find some fitting nostrum out.     What need to say that priceless drug     Had not in any mine been dug?     What need to say no skilful leech     Could check that plethora of speech?     Suffice it, that one lucky day     CARDENIO tried--another way.     A Hermit (there were hermits then;     The most accessible of men!)     Near Vauxhall's sacred shade resided;     In him, at length, our friend confided.     (Simples, for show, he used to sell;     But cast Nativities as well.)     Consulted, he looked wondrous wise;     Then undertook the enterprise.     What that might be, the Muse must spare:     To tell the truth, she was not there.     She scorns to patch what she ignores     With Similes and Metaphors;     And so, in short, to change the scene,     She slips a fortnight in between.     Behold our pair then (quite by chance!)     In Vauxhall's garden of romance,--     That paradise of nymphs and grottoes,     Of fans, and fiddles, and ridottoes!     What wonder if, the lamps reviewed,     The song encored, the maze pursued,     No further feat could seem more pat     Than seek the Hermit after that?     Who then more keen her fate to see     Than this, the new LEUCONO,     On fire to learn the lore forbidden     In Babylonian numbers hidden?     Forthwith they took the darkling road     To ALBUMAZAR his abode.     Arriving, they beheld the sage     Intent on hieroglyphic page,     In high Armenian cap arrayed     And girt with engines of his trade;     (As Skeletons, and Spheres, and Cubes;     As Amulets and Optic Tubes;)     With dusky depths behind revealing     Strange shapes that dangled from the ceiling,     While more to palsy the beholder     A Black Cat sat upon his shoulder.     The Hermit eyed the Lady o'er     As one whose face he'd seen before;     And then, with agitated looks,     He fell to fumbling at his books.     CARDENIO felt his spouse was frightened,     Her grasp upon his arm had tightened;     Judge then her horror and her dread     When "Vox Stellarum" shook his head;     Then darkly spake in phrase forlorn     Of Taurus and of Capricorn;     Of stars averse, and stars ascendant,     And stars entirely independent;     In fact, it seemed that all the Heavens     Were set at sixes and at sevens,     Portending, in her case, some fate     Too fearful to prognosticate.     Meanwhile the Dame was well-nigh dead.     "But is there naught," CARDENIO said,     "No sign or token, Sage, to show     From whence, or what, this dismal woe?"     The Sage, with circle and with plane,     Betook him to his charts again.     "It vaguely seems to threaten Speech:     No more (he said) the signs can teach."     But still CARDENIO tried once more:     "Is there no potion in your store,     No charm by Chaldee mage concerted     By which this doom can be averted?"     The Sage, with motion doubly mystic,     Resumed his juggling cabalistic.     The aspects here again were various;     But seemed to indicate Aquarius.     Thereat portentously he frowned;     Then frowned again, then smiled:--'twas found!     But 'twas too simple to be tried.     "What is it, then?" at once they cried.     "Whene'er by chance you feel incited     To speak at length, or uninvited;     Whene'er you feel your tones grow shrill     (At times, we know, the softest will!),     This word oracular, my daughter,     Bids you to fill your mouth with water:     Further, to hold it firm and fast,     Until the danger be o'erpast."     The Dame, by this in part relieved     The prospect of escape perceived,     Rebelled a little at the diet.     CARDENIO said discreetly, "Try it,     Try it, my Own. You have no choice,     What if you lose your charming voice!"     She tried, it seems. And whether then     Some god stepped in, benign to men;     Or Modesty, too long outlawed,     Contrived to aid the pious fraud,     I know not:--but from that same day     She talked in quite a different way.